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CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATION LEARNING Organization learning is the process through which managers seek to improve employees desire to understand and manage the organization and its task environment so that employees can make decisions that continuously raise the organizational effectiveness. whereas a learning organization is that whose managers try to maximize the ability of the individuals and groups to think and behave creatively and thus maximize the potentials for organizational learning to take place. At the heart of organizational learning there are two aspects namely: 1. Creativity: The ability of a decision maker to come out with or discover original and novel ideas that leads to feasible alternative courses of action. 2. Innovation: The process of implementing creativity is referred to as innovation. Encouraging creativity amongst managers is usually of pressing organizational concern and many organizations go as far as employing experts to help in the development of programs that can help in training their managers in the art of creativity and problem solving. Five principles for creating a learning organization have been highlighted by Peter Senge as below: i. For organizational learning to take place, the top managers must allow every person in the organization to develop a sense of personal mastery. Managers must empower the employees to experiment, create and explore what they want. Build complex challenging mental models: Employees in an organization need to be encouraged to build sophisticated ways of thinking that will challenge them to find new and better ways of performing task. Hence deepen their understanding in what is involved in a particular activity. Promote team learning: Managers must do everything they can to promote group creativity. Team learning has been seen as more important than individual learning in increasing organizational learning. Most important decisions are normally made in subunits search as groups, functions and divisions. Building a shared vision: Managers must emphasize the importance of having a shared vision in an organization. An organization with a common model of that all organization members use to frame problems or opportunities. System Thinking: To create a learning organization, managers must recognize the level of learning on another. This means there is therefore liitle point in creating teams to facilitate team

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learning if managers do not take steps to give employees freedom to develop a sense of personal mastery. The managers must therefore: a. Promote Individual creativity b. Promote group creativity c. Promote creativity ant global level